I am currently a Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine in the UK, having written for Wired UK since its launch in 2009, and speak regularly on the impact of developing technologies on consumer behaviors at Wired Consulting events and elsewhere.
In my copious free time, I write for Wired, GQ and elsewhere on the emerging digital culture, from gaming giants to adventurous startups, and provide creative insight for technology companies. In previous lives, I managed corporate communications for a large software company, and was a senior creative at a Hoxton agency. But then again, who wasn't?
I'm also on Twitter and Google Plus. Send tips and/or contacts to danielATdanielnyegriffiths.org

Comment: Relax, People. Nobody's Going To Make You Buy A Chromebook Pixel

I mentioned in my recent meandering about the dangers of trying to make a game based on Aliens - in action-movie terms, a task comparable to trying to make a pop song based on The Wasteland - that a bad review is often more fun to write than a good review.

We’ve seen that maxim borne out in coverage of Google‘s announcement of the Chromebook Pixel, which it seems has proven actively offensive to some sensibilities. Jean-Baptiste Su, of this parish, was so struck by the boldness of charging $1300 for a Chromebook that he put an exclamation point not only at the end of his title but at the end of his subhead and picture caption as well – a level of emphasis that would leave a newspaper subeditorgasping in admiration, and possibly bleeding from the ears.

A less emphatic but no less damning verdict was delivered by Sam Biddle of Gizmodo, who listed “Every reason not to buy a Chromebook Pixel“. Funnily enough, he missed the most important one, which I will come to later.

Of course, there is fun to be had in the other direction, also. My colleague Dave Thier, by suggesting that the Pixel looked cooler than an Apple product, has attracted a charmingly vibrant set of discussions from admirers and opponents of the Cupertino colossus.

Apple-y ever after? The Chromebook Pixel

Pixel, or pixilated*? You decide!

The best one-line analysis I have encountered of the Pixel so far comes from Cryptocat’s creator Nadim Kobiessi:

As a general user, you can see his point. A netbook with a Core i5 processor? And a touchscreen? Without the ability to run the sort of applications that create huge files, but with a terabyte of cloud storage? Designed aesthetically for people delivering presentations at TEDx events, but without the ability to run Keynote? Und so weiter.

I didn’t make him for you

The Goog is saying that the Pixel is aimed at developers, the enterprise and “early adopters” – that is, people who make money from their laptop, those who spend other people’s money on their laptop and those who have more money than sense when it comes to laptops. This is probably just about true, but the emphasis invites scrutiny.

The primary market for the Pixel, as it was for the Nexus One, is probably laptop makers, sellers and ODMs, for whom the message is “we know this is overspecced and overpriced, but this is what we expect a laptop that runs a convergent, touch-based, one-or-two-years-down-the-line OS to behave like. Start your engines.” Which is fine – it achieves that without needing to sell a single model.

The odd shape of the Pixel’s screen has been commented upon, as has its pixel density – The Verge described at as “Retina-like“, in comparison specifically to Apple’s 13″ Macbook retina display. Step away from the Apple store, however, and there is another comparison. The Google Nexus 10 tablet has a 2560 by 1600 pixel display. The Chromebook Pixel has a 2560 by 1700 pixel display. Both have touch screens.

Appy together

Remember how I mentioned that Gizmodo missed the most important reason not to buy a Chromebook Pixel? This is basically it. That reason is because, statistically, you are probably not a developer of mobile apps.

If I made my living developing apps, I might be thinking to myself at this point “Huh. That means I can precisely mimic how an app will look and behave on the touchscreen of a Nexus 10, while having just enough screen real estate left for a toolbar. And I have a full-sized physical keyboard. Which means, in turn, that I can do my coding and my testing very easily on the same device.”

I might then think further, “Also, I can stop being noogied by the iOS developers, who never shut up about how their hardware looks so much better than mine. And, since this is a vital business tool, I can expense it, and then amortize it over three years.”

I might then think yet further. “Wait. I am actually a Google employee, or likely to be invited to the next Google I/O. I’m getting one of these things for free anyway, aren’t I? Cool.”

So. By the time you get to the market that is looking at using the Chromebook Pixel to blog about whether or not the Chromebook Pixel is a good idea, your arrow is a long way from the heart.

Which probably suits Google. From the experience of the Nexus devices, we can assume that anything like the kind of demand that Apple experiences for its MacBook products would cause an immediate supply chain implosion and ginormous waiting lists. One might surmise that pricing it above comparable Apple hardware is a way to manage demand – only developers and serious Fandroids (two circles of a Venn diagram which tend to overlap) are likely to order it, thus avoiding the problems of the Nexus 4, which experienced unmanageable demand by being better and cheaper than almost every comparable Android phone on the market).

So, we can probably relax. Google is not challenging Apple with the Chromebook Pixel, or trying to, regardless of the marketing language. It is, rather, aiming to shore up the markets in which it is already strong, by helping to develop and deliver a better application ecosystem to non-iOS mobile devices.

If you absolutely want to spend $1300 on a Chromebook, of course, it is giving you that option. But I probably wouldn’t bother if the logic of doing so is elusive. Just get an Ultrabook and put a Linux distro on it. Or, indeed, a MacBook.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

I have to say, you article makes perfectly sense, the problem is, people that a google Keynote is the same as an Apple Keynote, but it isnt, Apple keynote is for consumer, Google Keynote is for Developer and OEM`s, even the Nexus4 everybody is complaining about becaaue of its Battery life…it is also a developer and OEM Tool, even if it would run by wire, it would fulfill its cause.

It’s a good point, although I think the 4 was something of a surprise hit, also, and the 7 was both a proof of concept and a viable device. Google certainly isn’t averse to competing in the hardware market, or indeed to tweaking Apple’s nose or trying to encourage Android partners to raise their device game by example. However, it doesn’t have the same margin structure as Apple, which is intimately connected to the two companies’ differing relationships to and with hardware…

OK, _this_ is new on me. Do you mean that the absence of a strong opposing force has removed the incentive to Google to raise its game? Like the classic matches between Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, or Napoleon and Wellington?

This is a wonderful article. I had read a few reviews and noticed a split between naysayers who seemed focused on the value proposition the Pixel represents in today’s marketplace and the thumbs-up reviewers who looked at what the admittedly overpriced machine represents for the future of operating systems, formats, touch interaction and the like. Your perspective on who the real target group is for this product is an even higher-level strategic look at Pixel. It’s a chess match between the big players, and if you judge based solely on who lost a pawn in the latest round you’ll fail to understand what is happening and who may actually be winning — or setting themselves up to win.

Thank you – I am very glad you enjoyed it! I thought that my Forbes colleagues – and the other commentators mentioned, among many others – had done an admirable job of staking out the ground, so I could go a little deeper. I am very gratified that it was of interest to you.

I have been trying to manage steadily increasing remote file access demands at work. I manage a file share with a large collection of videos, images, PDFs, uncompressed powerpoint files, and other miscellaneous data files. Many users need access to these files, so I create VPN logins for these users. VPN is slow with all the overhead and we can forget about video. When users leave the country, the ping becomes ridiculous and the VPN of little use. Plus, managing access to the VPN is a chore and security liability. I tried creating a “file share” user in Google Apps and dropped 25 gigs of files in it, but that was only 1/3 of just the PDFs, so I scrapped that project. I thought about loading that user up with 1TB to take all of the recent data, but that was going to be $600 / year in addition to all the effort and sync software licensing.

Yesterday, Google started offering this complimentary laptop with a discounted storage plan. I figured I would shave nearly 1/3 off the proposed budget for storage space and get some sort of shiny object to boot.

In all seriousness, if Google had not included the terabyte of cloud storage space, I would probably have just closed the Google Play tab and moved on.